Learning to Become a Mentor: A Study of Elementary School Teachers' Professional Development

• In Event: 54.073 - Across the Domains: Mentoring Throughout the Professional Journey

Abstract

This research explored the reflections of experienced teachers on their roles as mentors in an online continuing education program designed for beginning elementary school teachers. The researchers are professionals from a public university, the Federal University of São Carlos /UFSCar –SP, Brazil, and the mentors were experienced elementary school teachers. By conducting a research intervention, we focused on the professional development of experienced teachers in their learning to be mentors’ trajectories, which included the examination of their reflections over the construction of the program and its implementation process focused on their professional development. The program is intended for beginning teachers (up to five years of professional experience) in their first years of Elementary School interested in investing in their professional development. It has as objectives: to contribute to the formation of reflexive teachers, encouraging a constant process of self-evaluation of professional skills and reorientation of their work; foster the autonomy of teachers by promoting the improvement in teaching activity, both in the curriculum development, and in class and knowledge management; provide support to teachers teaching, fostering their personal and professional well-being, facilitating their adaptation to the education system, the reality of the school and the community and their peers integration; help teachers overcome their difficulties, that may arise at different times of the profession; contribute to their permanence in teaching profession. The program had the duration of 36 months, including three-hour weekly meetings with participation of researchers and mentors. Through a research with an analytical-descriptive approach, we seek to understand how the written and oral narratives can illustrate the learning to be a mentor processes of 10 experienced teachers. The main data sources were the virtual correspondences that these mentors had with the novice teachers under their supervision, via Internet, written journals and the dialogues between mentors and researchers at the weekly meetings. The model of intervention involved the understanding of the mentors’ thought , via theirs narratives, and by means of collaboratively interactions reflecting with them the situations they encountered in their dialogs with their mentees regarding their professional careers and planning/building coping strategies to the demands placed by them. It was necessary to establish a procedural work with the mentors in a, "two- way", approach by regarding them as only providers of data for the research activity. Situations considered as dilemmas or problematic issues resulted in the decision-making by collective solutions from consensus. The mentors revealed - through their written and oral stories and narratives - their reflective processes in a systematic, rigorous and disciplined manner, as involving: an experience; the appointment(s) of problem(s) or question(s) that arise from the experience and the establishment of possible explanations for the problem(s) or issue(s); branch of explanations on hypotheses; experimentation or testing hypotheses. These results served as basis for better understanding of learning processes, professional development for the teaching profession, and to propose programs of the same nature.

Authors

• Aline M.R. Reali, Federal University of Sao Carlos

• Regina Tancredi, Federal University of Sao Carlos

• Maria Da Graca N. Mizukami, Presbyterian University Mackenzie and Federal University of Sao Carlos